READY TO PARTY: MUMIA ABU-JAMAL AND THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY

by Todd Steven Burroughs, Ph.D.

special to Prof. Kim's News Notes

Part Three:

'ARMED AND DANGEROUS': TRACKED BY THE FBI

By Todd Steven Burroughs

Most teenagers are tracked by parents, friends and
families. Because he was a member of the Black Panther Party, Wes Cook, a
teenager from Philadelphia who later re-named himself Mumia Abu-Jamal, was
tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. More than 600 sheets of
paper would be compiled on Cook from 1969, when he had turned 15, until
about 1974, the year of his 20th birthday.

Cook was only a Party member from May 1969 until October
1970—less than two years. The FBI kept up its tabs on Cook for more than
three years after he left the Party. The teenaged Cook had no criminal
record.

Like other authorities, the FBI considered the
Panthers—which had chapters and branches in more than a dozen cities within
two years of its 1966 founding—little more than a hate group. Which is not
completely surprising, when it is taken into account that a frequent Panther
rally chant was "Off The Pigs."

The FBI, those vanilla custodians of truth, justice and
the American way, somehow failed to understand that the chant was a reaction
to decades of police brutality specifically and centuries of white brutality
generally. The tone of a report on an August 1969 rally Cook attended is
typical of white haughtiness:

"One of the speakers was the minister of information
for the BPP (Philadelphia) [,] who gave an extemporaneous speech and
called [Philadelphia Police Commissioner Frank] RIZZO a Pig. Source said
the BPP member who spoke was WESLEY (LNU) [means Last Name Unknown], and
he said the usual trash about the oppressor and the roll [sic] of the
Vanguard [,] interspersing his talk with the usual obscenities."

Another FBI report on the rally:

"[INFORMER NAME BLOTTED OUT] attended a rally at
Rittenhouse Square held 8/16/69. [INFORMER NAME BLOTTED OUT] observed
WESLEY COOK as the BPP speaker. COOK gave a short [,] disjointed, barely
intelligible speech [,] which included quotes from [Chinese Communist
Party Chairman] MAO [Tse-Tung]’s Red Book and the usual BPP statements."

Cook was targeted for federal surveillance because he was
a Panther. When the Philadelphia Panther debuted at a May Day rally in
Philadelphia in 1969, the FBI decided to open files on all the Party
participants. So the bureau—which, during the previous year, had called the
Party the greatest threat to America’s internal security—actually spent
significant time and resources shadowing someone whose occupation they had
to list as "high school," even when Cook dropped out to join the Party
fulltime.

The FBI had long tentacles. It tracked Cook via its many
Party informants around the nation. The bureau knew when he was on the phone
in the Philadelphia Panther office and what he said. When he spoke at
rallies. When he was transferred to Panther offices in New York and Oakland.
When he was "Officer Of The Day" in the Panther National Headquarters in
Oakland (May 11, 1970, according to bureau documents relaying information
from informants).

Of course, the monitoring had a dual purpose: to wage
constant psychological warfare against the Party, and to attempt to catch
the Panthers red-handed in illegal activity.

"IN ACCORDANCE WITH PRIOR AUTHORIZATION BY AUSA TONY
LOMBARDO, EDNY, WESLEY COOK WAS SEARCHED BY BUREAU AGENTS BEFORE BOARDING
THE PLANE. [NEXT SENTENCE IS BLOTTED OUT] NO WEAPON WAS LOCATED. BOTH
[NAME BLOTTED OUT] AND [NAME BLOTTED OUT] WERE FRISKED ALSO, WITH PRIOR
AUTHORITY, WITH NEGATIVE RESULTS. NO INCIDENTS."

The reason for the search was blotted out.

Clipped newspaper articles by and about Cook are a
constant in his files. The periodicals: The Militant, then and now
the organ of the Socialist Workers Party; The Philadelphia Tribune,
then and now the city’s leading Black newspaper; The Temple
(University) News, the student newspaper of Temple University; The
Black Panther; Babylon, a New York-based newspaper affiliated with
Eldridge Cleaver, and The Distant Drummer, an alternative paper
serving Philadelphia. Together, they delineate an era in which young people
demanded change without asking for permission—and definitely without fearing
consequences.

The bureau acknowledged a grudging respect, of sorts, for
its subject. A memorandum dated October 26, 1970 reads: "Cook has worked in
Philadelphia, New York and the BPP national office in Oakland, California,
where he was officer of the day and worked on the BPP newspaper. Although he
is only 16 years old and has no informant potential, he possesses much
intelligence and evidentiary information of great interest if he will talk."

He never did, even when he put the Party in his past.

Dec. 3, 1970 memorandum:

"COOK left the Black Panther Party in mid-October 1970,
having resigned. He was not the object of Party discipline. He, along with
several other individuals long associated with the Party, ceased their
Black Panther Party affiliation. [NEXT SENTENCE BLOTTED OUT] COOK has
since returned to high school, but still associates with [Former
Philadelphia Black Panther Party leader Reginald] SCHELL and his new
organization [,] dubbed the ‘Black United Liberation Front.’"

From a Death Row cell, Mumia Abu-Jamal became a scholar
of the Party. Detailing the FBI’s subversive and sinister role in helping to
destroy dissent throughout the 20th century, Abu-Jamal wrote the
following in "We Want Freedom," his history of the Party:

"The Bureau used its enormous power, influence, and
contacts to intimidate politicians and assassinate people in their beds.
It used the omnipresent press to hound people out of their jobs. It
sabotaged allegedly free elections. It destroyed marriages. It shattered
families. It fomented violence between political and social adversaries.
And this is but the tip of the iceberg.

"If this is a law enforcement agency," continued
Abu-Jamal, "one shudders to think what a hate group would do."

Todd Steven Burroughs, Ph.D. (tburroughs@jmail.umd.edu)
is an independent researcher/writer based in Hyattsville, Md. He is a
primary author of Civil Rights Chronicle (Legacy), a history of the
Civil Rights Movement, and a contributor to Putting The Movement Back
Into Civil Rights Teaching (Teaching For Change/Poverty & Race Research
Action Council), a K-12 teaching guide of the Civil Rights Movement. He is
writing a biography of Abu-Jamal.